The conveyance of fluids or effluents of the multiphase type without separation of their constituents is very important in industry since it avoids separation of the phases of the effluent and recompression or pumping of each of the phases separately.
However, this method of conveyance without separation of the effluents requires the use of pumps capable of communicating to the effluents a sufficient pressure value to ensure their transfer over a certain distance.
Most pumps, if not all of them, are adapted to transfer effluents having a certain GLR value included in a determined range. In order to overcome this limitation, a device for regulating the fluctuations of effluents is positioned upstream from the pump and allows the latter to be supplied with an effluent whose GLR value is compatible with the working characteristics of the pump.
French patent No. 2,642,539 thus describes a device allowing damping and regulation of the sudden variations of liquid and gas running into the device, notably on the appearance of gas or liquid plugs, i.e. a large amount of fluid consisting of the gas phase or of the liquid phase only, and enabling the pump positioned thereafter to be supplied with an effluent having a given GLR value.
French patent application 91/16,231 also mentions a method for predimensioning a device of the type described in French patent FR-2,642,539 in order to have, at any time, a sufficient amount of liquid to carry off a large amount of gas and to maintain an optimum GLR value according to the characteristics of the multiphase pump located downstream.
It is however becoming increasingly important to have a device allowing transmission, to a pumping assembly consisting of at least two pumps, a multiphase fluid whose GLR value is compatible with the running of each of the pumps. In fact, the transfer of a multiphase fluid of a large volume may require the use of several pumps, each pump having its own characteristics.
Moreover, increasingly compact and lighter units are much sought-after for economic reasons and in order to allow production in difficult zones.
Finally, it is necessary to have devices of simple and reliable design.